I need variety!

 I've got a friend with a big surgery coming up in a couple of months, so I want to give them a quilt.  When considering my (considerable) UFOs, my plaid string quilt seemed like a good option for them, based on Julie's beautiful creation.

It's up on the design wall and I've completed a few more 9-patches and sashings, but man! Now I remember why I fizzled out with this quilt.  I'm excited about how it is going to look, but it is so boring for me to create.  Part of why I love scrap quilts is that there are so many different fabrics playing together.  With this one, it's just plaid.  I'm gonna do it, but I need something to spice up my sewing stints as well.

Today I finished my January Bee Blocks:

Finished sewing together all of the 2022 Stashbuster blocks that I had precut:

I'm going for a non-traditional holiday quilt look

And worked on this scrappy bear paw variation that I started over winter break:

I also did some purging, identifying some orphan blocks, some fabric and some thread that I plan to take to Swansons to swap out for some quilting scraps, and along the way I unearthed some of the quilts I started hand quilting but never finished.  I need to commit to getting back to them.  There's the one I made for my bed around 15 years ago but never finished:

And this scrap quilt where I was playing with big stitch quilting in a rainbow of colors - I completely forgot this quilt even existed:

There's this mini twister quilt made from salvaged pillowcases:

Completely forgot about this sailboat baby quilt:

And this self-portrait:

There were others, too.  I amaze myself sometimes with how much I DON'T finish!  Time to change that!

Yours for the taking - Quilty Adoption Event

I've been participating in this event for years now.  What a great feeling to free up some of my creative space while giving someone else a head start on a new project!  Thanks, Cynthia, for hosting!

My offerings this time around are pretty small - plentiful, but small.  As in, if you don't like tiny piecing, these probably won't appeal to you.  And while they won't free up a whole lot of physical space for me, I will feel so much better if they get put to use somewhere.  The only restriction on who can win is that I will only ship to the US and Canada (sorry, friends across the pond and elsewhere!).  Leave a comment letting me know which entry(ies) you want and I will pull the names of winners on Sunday, March 22 with a random number generator if more than one person is interested in any given offering.

A. First off, we have the 52 extra 2.5" scrappy yellow and neutral 4 patches left over from my Good Fortune (2018 Bonnie Hunter Mystery) Quilt.  Eight of them have been sewn into 16-patches, but they can be disassembled...

B.  And then there are the 115 1.5" gray and scrappy bonus triangles that I cut off (and sewed) from a baby quilt I made in 2013.

C. You're going to see a theme here...more bonus triangles!  I really hate throwing anything away, and I love tiny piecing!  I just never seem to get around to using my bonus triangles!  Here are 42 1.5" patriotic HST in a blue with white stars and a flag fabric left over from a quilt that I had my students make in a summer camp quilting class sometime between 2013 and 2016 (hmmm...can't find a photo).

D. Surprise!  More bonus triangles!  These 118 scrappy red, white and blue HST trim down to 1.5", and come from a RWB star quilt that I never finished.  (which reminds me, I should pull that out and work on it!  I started it in 2015.)

E. In 2016 I had customers who came into my shop sew blocks for a community quilt, Arkansas Crossroads, which then was raffled off to raise money for a local charity.  These 146 white (Kona) and scrappy 1.5" HST are left over from that project.

F. And finally, some more bonus triangles, but these trim to a whopping 2"!  These 52 white and solids HST are left over from some Block Lotto blocks I made in 2012.  Time to let them go, right?

Won't you please give these little fellas a home?  Maybe there is a mini quilt or a doll quilt in your future.  Or maybe these can make a pieced border for something.  Or perhaps they can make pinwheels to form the center of other blocks.  Lots of possibilities here!

Check out other adoptees at Cynthia's blog.

Sew Many Strips DONE!

Despite a long day of playing chauffeur and nursemaid to my family before working tonight, I squeezed in just enough sewing time to fix yesterday's goof and finish the Sew Many Strips top.  I love it!  Time for me to find a longarm quilter so I can get it finished and on my bed.

Turns out, I got a little carried away and made too many border units.  No worries - I really like this border, so I may make just a few more and use them to go around a smaller (baby? lap?) quilt.

Maybe I can make a center out of my overflowing HST bin.

But first, I am determined to finish my Good Fortune quilt top.

Just five more blocks to go before I can sew the center together.  I think I've created all the border units already, but I'd have to double check.  My goal is to have this top done before  Labor Day.  Since I have only two working days left before I get three weeks off, I think it is an achievable goal.

Knocking out the UFOs and busting the stash feels so good!

I'm linking up with Oh Scrap and Monday Making.

The Home Stretch!

Tomorrow starts the last week of school before a nine-day Thanksgiving Break - woo hoo!  I'm doing my best to get my On Ringo Lake quilt done before the release of Bonnie Hunter's new mystery, but I don't know if I'm going to make it; I realized this weekend that I never finished one of the clues, so I'm scrambling to make some flying geese units so I can finish piecing the blocks.  I did get three or four more blocks pieced this weekend, though.

My leaders and enders for the weekend was to sew together the bonus triangles I had laying around from a recent project

and add them to my HST tin.  At some point, I should be able to make something fun from all of these.

I L-O-V-E butter cookies!

I also finished and mailed off five blocks for Carole's Carolina Hurricane Quilt Project.

No finishes to show, except a couple more stockings for my ETSY shop

but I've been thinking a lot about beginnings - five people here at work are having babies this spring!  Five opportunities to make fun little quilts!!

I'm linking up with Oh Scrap and Monday Making.

Bonus Triangles

Even though my official move date was August 11, I am STILL unpacking.  This week, I found a baggie of bonus triangles.  What's a gal to do but start sewing them together!

After sewing them into HSTs,

I trimmed them to size (1.75"), and started playing with layouts. 

This little block took longer than I'd like to admit, and I didn't particularly like it as I was sewing it, but now that it is done, I think I like it.  I think I'd like it more on point with some fun alternate blocks in between, but I'll have to make a couple more first to play around with it.  There's not much time for sewing in my life right now, but a week from now, I'll be on Thanksgiving Break, and I plan to sew, Sew, SEW!!!

In the meantime, I'm linking up with Oh, Scrap and Monday Making.

First time sewing since my move

SO MUCH has changed since the last time I posted!  I sold my business, moved to Massachusetts, and started a new job.  Whew!  It has been exhausting, but fun and so worthwhile:

• My kids are happy, getting better grades than they have in years, and are more involved in school than ever before.
• My husband is super happy with his new job.
• My dog, Biscuit, is getting around better ever since I started adding organic turmeric to his food and started taking him for long walks (can't just let him out anymore)
• My job is challenging and exhausting, but rewarding.
• My job includes 3 meals a day for my entire family, so I haven't cooked in months (best perk EVER!!)
• I have seen my mom and sisters more in the last three months than I have in the last 3 years combined.
• I've been able to get a bit of knitting done - currently working on mittens for myself since winter is coming.

And today, I sewed!!!

Not everything is perfect.  Our employer-supplied housing is nice, but MUCH smaller than I am used to.  I haven't even been able to bring all of my fabric and yarn into the apartment, let alone unpack it.  My home office is serving triple duty as a guest room and a sewing room, which means it is cramped and untidy and not all that conducive to doing anything.  HOWEVER, today I started reading one of my new Amish Quilt Shop mysteries, and that made me want to quilt, so I hauled the ironing board and iron down from the laundry room and reached into a drawer to pull out a UFO (heaven knows I have plenty to choose from!). 

I pulled out a project for which I had already assembled most of the blocks and had done all of the cutting and just needed assembly.  I got it to the place where it is all in rows now, and I'll sew on the setting triangles and sew the rows together tomorrow.  I don't have a purpose for this, but I guess it would make a nice, low volume baby quilt.  I used a charm pack that someone had given me along with some Kona Snow.  The pattern is Breezy Buntings from Moda Bake Shop, although I modified the pattern to make mine smaller because the charm pack didn't have enough fabric to make the quilt as designed.

It felt SO GOOD to hear the hum of the sewing machine and smell the warm fabric as I pressed it.  Why have I let so much time pass since the last time I sewed??